With The Amazing Spider-Man 2 heading into cinemas in the UK in just over a week, before a May 2nd kick-off in the States, not entirely unexpected news has arrived that Drew Goddard, the former writer of Lost and Buffy The Vampire Slayer, who made his directorial bow with The Cabin In The Woods, will duel writing of the Sinister Six spin-off with directing duties. That appointment - which was heavily hinted at when Goddard was announced as one of the five writers - along with Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, Jeff Pinkner and Ed Solomon who will collaborate on overseeing a unified Spider-Man narrative and tone across several films. Naturally, with Marvel Studios doing so well with the two Phases of MCU movies so far, Sony will be feeling the pressure to deliver on the Spider-Man property, in order to keep hold of the rights in a similar way to Fox's aggressive use of the X-Men rights, and the franchise brain-trust, and the promise of two spin-offs should be fair indication that there's a master-plan in motion similar to Kevin Feige's vaunted 2028 movie map. We already have dates for the next two Amazing Spider-Man movies, and you have to suspect that the announced spin-offs will come between, or close to those releases, but what of the model after the Venom spin-off? presumably that will set up a fifth Amazing Spider-Man film, unless Sony have no intention of having Spider-Man actually meet his most beloved of villains? That surely is unthinkable. So that would be the next five Spidey movies accounted for, provided Marc Webb's Amazing vision stays on track, and beyond that point, with potentially seven successes under their belts, it is unlikely Sony will simply allow the rights to revert back to Marvel. And the Spider-Man comics universe is more than bountiful enough to prolong the screen relationship with the friendly neighbourhood superhero even beyond 2020, as long as the right storylines are adapted, and the right villains exploited. This of course depends on the enduring success of Marc Webb's version of the character - just as our look into Marvel's future (and indeed Kevin Feige's) required the suspension of any possibility that any of the upcoming movies will be a failure. And naturally, given the uncertainty relating to the ownership of movie rights, there's a certain degree of fanboyism to be expected (as if that should ever be considered reductive).
